Ihe Anyị Hapụru, 2023, Bronze, 10” x 7.5” x 2” and 2.5” x 9.5” x 3”
Neither Here Nor There But Always Home, 2023, UV ink printing on acrylic, ready-made metal holder,
24”x18”x1” and 12”x9”x1”
Photo credit: Alison Postma and Niliin
Ihe anyị hapụrụ (2023) is a set of two hair accessories scaled up and cast in solid bronze. It is part of a larger body of work that imagines the artist’s burial chamber as a future ancestor, inspired by 9th-century bronze sculptures excavated from an ancient Igbo burial chamber in southwestern Nigeria in the 1940s.
The artist would like to thank Atelier La Coulee, the Montreal-based foundry where these works were made as part of an artist residency from Fall 2022 - Spring 2023.
Key words: bronze; restitution; ethnographic gaze; Black girlhood; future ancestor